Sarah Peirse

Sarah Peirse began acting in the late 1970s. On-screen, she has made a habit of avoiding formula projects, often working with emerging directors who demonstrate a fresh eye: Vincent Ward on The Navigator, Peter Jackson on Heavenly Creatures, Christine Jeffs on Rain. For Peirse, the result has been an impressive body of awards and nominations.

Sarah Peirse studied for a year at a drama school allied to Auckland’s Theatre Corporate. Her classmates included two actors she would work with again, Donogh Rees (Constance) and Phillip Gordon (Inside Straight). Afterwards, Peirse found herself acting on stage in everything from A Bear Called Paddington to Three Sisters. In 1984, after a year in London, she began directing theatre, starting with Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls at Theatre Corporate.

Peirse’s first dose of screen acting was for a beautifully-lensed portrait of Auckland car culture: 1980 short film Queen Street. Peirse played the pregnant girlfriend, wedged in the front seat between two guys in love with their cars.

She followed it by jumping into the deep end for A Woman of Good Character. Peirse appeared in almost every scene of this immigrant drama, playing a young English servant who travels to New Zealand, and finds herself amongst questionable company on a rundown Canterbury farm. Initiated by producer Grahame McLean, the film was directed, largely on location near Queenstown, by Angel Mine’s David Blyth. Peirse won a Feltex Best Actress award for her work; she was later called back for reshoots when the 50 minute drama was expanded to tele-feature length (this time under the title It’s Lizzie to those Close).

The 80s saw Peirse alternating theatre with a run of small television roles, and the occasional movie. Among the TV roles, she played mother to one of the childhood heroes of WWII tale The Champion, and enjoyed a guest role as the daughter of a racehorse owner in Inside Straight, a show "about Wellington’s underside".

She was also award nominated for two features that decade — a small part in Richard Riddiford’s debut feature Arriving Tuesday, and playing “the only woman in a film about men”: Vincent Ward’s acclaimed fantasy The Navigator. Again Peirse showed her gift for accents, this time 14th century Cumbrian. But the Best Supporting Actress award she won for The Navigator was likely also recognition of courage under fire. Peirse’s memories of a "hard but marvellous" shoot include filming in deep snow halfway up the Southern Alps, while heavily pregnant.

Since The Navigator, Peirse has spent extended periods living outside of New Zealand. At the end of 1989, she began two years with the Melbourne Theatre Company, then spent nine years in Sydney, followed by three in the United Kingdom.

While in Australia Peirse was invited home to work on 1994‘s Heavenly Creatures, based on a true-life friendship between two Christchurch-based teenagers which ended in matricide. Bowled over by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh's "magnificent" portrait of a disintegrating mother-daughter relationship, she signed on to play Pauline Parker’s unfortunate mother Honorah. She also did double duties on set, working as an acting coach to newcomer Melanie Lynskey, who played her screen daughter.

Peirse’s empathetic performance won the 1995 NZ Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, plus a nomination at America’s Chlotrudis awards. Heavenly Creatures made it onto more than 30 ‘best films of the year’ lists. Amidst a rush of rhapsodic reviews, Variety’s David Rooney argued that her portrait of the quietly tragic mother was "terrific".

The following decade Peirse returned home, having been won over by a bigger role in another memorable script: beachside coming of age tale Rain, based on a Kirsty Gunn novel. Playing the sophisticated, unsatisfied Kate was the type of role she had done on stage, but never on film. Though critical of the character’s lack of parental responsibility, Peirse enjoyed the lack of domesticity. "It was wonderful because most roles for women in their 40s are about serving the needs of others in terms of cups of tea and coffee”.

Rain marked the feature film debut of commercials director Christine Jeffs. The drama won enthusiastic reviews from The NZ Herald (who named it one of the 10 best films of the year), North and South, The Evening Post, New York Times, NY Daily News, and the The Los Angeles Times.

Listener reviewer Philip Matthews argued that Peirse was "especially good in the film’s most difficult and unsympathetic role"; New York Newsday’s Jan Stuart wrote that she "delivers a gorgeously haunted performance that is no less sympathetic for its subtlety". Peirse’s performance won her Best Actress awards in NZ and the Fantasporto Festival in Portugal, plus another Chlotrudis nomination.

Sarah Peirse continues to act on stage and screen. Her stage career has included leading roles in Cabaret, Three Sisters, A Streetcar Named Desire, and an award-winning turn in Melbourne as Molly Sweeney. Overseas, her roles on television include guest appearances on Australia’s Flying Doctors, Water Rats, and Spirited, and a role as a turn-of-the-century eccentric in 2001 British hit Murder Rooms.

Back home she was nominated for another local television award, for her work in tele-movie Aftershock (as the woman running an emergency management office, after an earthquake in Wellington). She also appeared in Brendan Donovan's first feature The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell, and played exasperated mother to Katherine Mansfield in 2011 tele-movie Bliss.

From the 2010s on, Peirse has enjoyed a slew of major roles on Australian television; from crime shows Old School, Hunters and Seven Types of Ambiguity, to multi-season dramas like Offspring, The Let Down and Love Me. Back on home soil, she joined the cast of a line of productions which mixed Kiwi and overseas talents: medical drama  The Mistake led by American Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games), Went Up the Hill led by Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread), and Netflix series Sweet Tooth.

Her role as one the "baddies" in hit vineyard-set series Under the Vines gave her another great reason to return home. Acting alongside her long-time collaborator John Bach, she plays one half of The Silvertons, a rival couple of vinters, who cause the protagonists havoc. “There’s a sweetness to this show — which is really nice to play and be a part of," she told Stuff in 2024. "...and also I’m sure to view in these times.”

Profile updated on 20 June 2025

Sources include
Sarah Peirse
David Rooney, 'Heavenly Creatures' (Review) - Variety, September 11 1994
Melanie Parkes, 'The vintage career of Under The Vines star Sarah Peirse' (Interview) - TV Guide, 9 September 2024
'Sarah Peirse' (Agent's Biography), Robert Bruce website. Accessed 4 February 2012
Unknown writer, 'Rain screens in 40 U.S. cities' - NZ Film, November 2002 (Issue 69, Page 8)
Rain press kit